Labour leader receives huge welcome from packed hall
Jeremy Corbyn remains in general election mode, maintaining a tough schedule of appearances around the country on top of his parliamentary duties.
And wherever he goes, when he meets the people, the people respond.
As Corbyn appeared tonight in Newcastle upon Tyne, the geordies gave Corbyn a reception that suggests that media spin and polling of his supposed unpopularity – just like during the 2017 general election campaign – sit somewhere between invention and Establishment wishful thinking:
Around two thousand people packed into the venue, with a similar number outside but unable to get in.
The more Corbyn goes out to the people directly and bypasses media filters, the better it gets – and when general election media rules kick in, it will only improve.
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They were queuing round the block
I was one of those Geordies, the atmosphere was electrifying!
Brilliant !!!
This sort of thing is so uplifting. Does it make you wonder how effective polls are? It doesn’t me, cos I already think they are toss
Ditto, replacing “polls” with “MSM”!
Opinion polls are a racket,dominated by the corperate world to influence the masses and make a mockery of democracy…..A little like the idea of cartel used to be illegal now its good business.Jeremy will prove it again if we don’t miss the election boat!
The true test is when Jezza hurls himself onto the mosh pit…
…will the crowd catch him or let him hit the deck and end up in a wheelchair?
😮😮😮
My thoughts were: ‘Will they pass him round the whole theatre or put him back on stage quickly to hear s’more?’
Well ideally, yes. Depends on who’s doing the catching!
There is a lot of wishful thinking about polls being the tools of the stooges etc.etc.. because their accuracy is variable. But the inaccuracy is measurable, and voting intentions.febrile.
Corbyn is great in a live audience situation, but 2000 people queuing round the block in a large urban centre to see him is self-selecting – not a sampling of his overall popularity.
Most large city venues can attract audiences of that size for a show that will have passed by most of the population who aren’t fans. Just a hard fact.
The fact is that given the distortions of the media, Labour has a massive task in cutting through, and this is what is reflected in the polls, not some evil conspiracy or, on the other hand, tools with laser-like accuracy. Optimism, on its own, won’t cut through that.
If anything will, it will be hard foot-slogging on the ground, as was done in Peterborough and in the 2007 election. That – and avoiding elementary cock-ups like the Watson coup.
Still I enjoyed it. Polls aside full halls are better than empty ones.
Jeremy is actually a tremendous asset – and that is why the establishment and neoliberal-vested interests attack him incessantly, intensely and so aggressively.
His MSM-avoidance is GENIUS, Brilliant and maximises his strengths. Moreover:
He doesn’t turn himself into a Daniel in the Lions Den – thereby denying the Watson-wing their Darius-like chance to rubbish and weaken Corbyn.
He radiates his message without compromising his integrity or sincerity more effectively. It is stronger and more powerful as a result
He does not repeat the Milliband mistakes, whereby he’d be shown to be a bacon-sandwich eating socialist conman.
Corbyn is our leader in so many ways and we marvel at his suitability for the role.
Now we have to make him PM.
“Jeremy is actually a tremendous asset ….His MSM-avoidance is GENIUS, Brilliant and maximises his strengths.”
We can all agree *here* about Corbyn’s sterling qualities (although I hesitate at idolatary)..
But ‘here’ isn’t the point. There is the question of *how* he cuts through the general antagonism of the media – the filter through which most people receive what is laughingly typified as ‘politics’.
That opens up the uncomfortable questions of precisely (a) how to raise the popularity of Labour and (b) how undercut the (relative) popularity of the worst PM in living memory. (If you think Miliband a ‘conman’, you need to get out more! – a typical generalised trope that actually undermines Labour ever being taken seriously)
Simply – there are swathes of people out there who aren’t enthusiasts and who need to be persuaded.
Did I say Milliband was a conman? No. You do this every fucking time someone posts something you can twist. RH. Why?
“Simply – there are swathes of people out there who aren’t enthusiasts and who need to be persuaded.”
I agree. And whereas you might think he HAS to use the MSM for this, I believe him NOT doing it is the right strategy. He has a movement of half a million supporters behind him – but the thing is, Corbyn is not running for President. Our enemies assume JC is a reason NOT to vote Labour, we say 200+ Labour commitments is a bloody good reason.
Moreover, if my CLP is anything to go by, membership numbers are actually increasing again, not shrinking as the MSM claim.
Importantly – Corbyn is NOT as unpopular as the BBC and MSM claim with their polls and incessant repition of ‘he’s not polular’. They work hard to ‘show’ he is unpopular. Very hard. He isn’t. He’s our main asset and he ATTRACTS votes, not repel them
Don’t discount the power of the word-of-mouth from people who were there spreading and “cutting through” to doubters who weren’t.
No need to get over-excited, qwertboi. I apologise for misinterpretation of the comment you made, which I recognise as actually being a summary of the media trope.
I don’t ‘twist’ things, and I’m quite happy to apologise if I do misinterpret rather than simply disagree
Beyond that, I do disagree with your analysis of the situation No party can duck the fact that it is the MSM that provides much of the political ‘knowledge’ of a high percentage of the electorate. It’s not difficult to divine that in everyday conversation – and no, Corbyn’s excellence in face-to-face contact and contact through social media doesn’t provide a simple solution.
Corbyn apart, the central lack of focus and expertise is a major problem in countering the bias in my view.
Thanks RH. I probably over-reacted. (But please – permit me – when you argue or believe something strongly and someone postulates against it you often seem to react strongly and go for the jugular. Thing is, if these are small or incidental points, your reaction reduces the force of your argument. I’ve noticed this a few times and I mean my observation to be constructive and helpful to you).
Yes – we fundamentally disagree on how the leader should relate to, and use the MSM. As the LSE research showed, the MSM and BBC are sadly parts of the problem, and unlikely ever – or knowingly – to be helpful to us or be part of the solution. Also the extensive private polling the party has commissioned since 2016 indicates that people notice the anti-Corbyn press coverage and that it actually helps Labour’s message to cut through (esp when Corbyn reacts by reducing his appearance on the media). He’ll obv feature more on MSM when impartiality rules minimise their damage. But no-one is likely to reject Labour just because they hate Corbyn. In GEs it is policies and local candidates that win votes and elections.
You and I certainly agree that the Corbyn-brand is strengthened when his followers and MPs commend and applaud him. The press bias is then perceived 1000-fold clearer and people give him and Labour their serious consideration and attention. At GE17 Corbyn’s policies saw Labour getting 10million extra votes and 40% vote share. This time – brexit obsessiveness permitting – it should be more.
qwertboi – We aren’t essentially in disagreement at all. The difference lies in the fact that I believe the influence of the MSM can’t be avoided : it really does influence sufficient crosses in boxes to make a difference – so the Labour Party has a much bigger task than the Tories in developing a tight policy to deal with this bias – not by converting it (we won’t), but by avoiding the landmines and bear traps.
I would the the amateur attempt to get rid of Watson as a case of falling into a bear trap – as well as the more significant stategic error of thinking that adopting the full IHRA mess would help to kill the ‘antisemitism’ scam. In a ‘no win’ situation, there’s frequently a less damaging way of losing.
Is Watson going to hold any rallies. He should because full ones are meaningless, thus, empty ones are a reflection of real authority. So some would have us believe.
Mrs Richardson at age 11 asked us to watch both evening news programmes in 1970,
What was clear and quite shocking to our young minds, was the same story being reported in different ways,
Fast forward 10 years and my first visit to Ireland, watching their coverage of the troubles confirmed what Mrs R had impressed on us, work it out for yourselves,
MSM and toilet papers, most people know its framed, their influence is negligible, watch the good people of Gogglebox, its a curse on all your houses
FPTP means a small numbef of people in a handful of seats swing the GE, my money on NHS and Leave with best deal,
Therefore JC wins
J
Interesting to see Corbyn being attacked by Chuka Umunna and others
after a story in the Guardian and the Observer in which it is claimed that Trump told Theresa May that he doubted Russian government involvement in the Skripal poisoning.
But the issue does raise some interesting questions:
1. How could someone survive coming into contact with a deadly nerve agent?
2 Why would the Russia government want to kill Skripal now when they have had plenty of time to do it in the past?
3 Why would they harm someone who was the subject of a spy swap when the convention is that such persons are not harmed so why break that taboo?
Security services are noted for dirty tricks – so anything is possible.
However, given the track record of Putin’s Russia, I couldn’t be arsed to spend effort on pleading the innocence of the post-KGB elite.
Another plug for a JVL-posted article : an interview with Greg Philo, lead author of ‘Bad News for Labour’. It covers the main issues of the MSM war on Corbyn well :
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/an-interview-with-greg-philo/
Thanks for the link. Brilliant, says it all. Ta.